Im a British ExPat living in San Francisco, California. Moved here in November 2009 with my husband Dave and our two westies Jess and Bluey.
Joined Weight Watchers online in Jan 2012, follow my progress here on my blog.

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Sunday, August 22, 2010

How I sometimes feel!!!

Ive just found this very funny video on you tube, and it sums up how I feel sometimes when I speak to people and have to repeat myself over and over again.........

It is quite a common occcurance, especially when Im on the phone, and the local chinese restaurant who we call on a regular basis still makes me spell out my road name!!

Surely my English accent isnt that hard to understand.

Now Im started on the whole subject, since being here I have only been asked twice if Im from Australia and once if I was Irish, actually make that twice, as a child last week said to me 'Why are you talking weird like an Irish person' - I quickly re-educated him :) Speaking to other British Ex-Pats , apparently its common to be asked if you are South African too - seriously!!

One thing that I have noticed since moving here is how friendly people are, in the UK you can walk down the street past lots of people and nobody speaks, but here everyone seems to speak or acknowledge you (although not in the city - mainly as its full of tourists), and I rarely find Im able to walk the dogs without people stopping to say how cute they are... Then I reply with 'thank-you' and all the questions begin, 'You are English, how cute, do you live here?' If I had a dollar for every time I've been told my accent is cute Id be rich! So sometimes Im glad when people walk past and don't speak to me, as after a while it gets annoying answering the same questions 'why are you here?', 'whats England like?' and the best ones are 'I have a friend called xxxxx who lives in England, do you know them?' I sometimes wonder if they teach kids at school about other countries, as they clearly are unaware that England is big enough that not everyone knows everyone else!

I guess this is my first real blog post about some of the UK/US differences, hopefully my next few posts will be as interesting. Also thanks for all the great ideas on what to blog about, I have them all on a post it note on my desk ready to work on

4 comments:

Great blog! Yes, geography skills are sorely lacking in US schools. Although I suppose it cuts both ways. As a Yank living in Iceland and travelling around Europe, it's always "so are you from New York or LA?". Apparently the US has only 2 large cities in a land of 300 million.

You will find that Americans are very uncomfortable with silence and we are very "curious" (i.e. overly chatty) in nature ;') That likely accounts for some of the perceived stupidity...

As a south african living in England:I get the Are you from Australia/New Zealand question all the time!And also, oh, A bloke I work with is from south africa. Hi name is Jan... do you know him?I have tried to minimise my sarcastic replies to:I know a bloke who lives in London. His name is Giles - maybe you know him?andSouth Africa is larger than the UK so he probably lived in a hut quite far away...